(Voices: "Long live Comrade Lenin! Hurrah!" Applause.) Comrades! It seems to me that through his speech and his declaration, Martov has succeeded in giving us an extraordinarily vivid example of how the groups and parties belonging to the Second International, both before and now, relate to Soviet power—the very Second International against which we have now founded the Communist International. Every one of you will have noticed the difference between Martov's speech and his declaration—a difference that comrade Sosnovskii underlined in his remark from the presidium, when he threw at Martov the question: "Isn't that last year's declaration?" Indeed, Martov's speech is undoubtedly dated to 1919, to the end of it, while the declaration is composed in such a way that we see in it a complete repetition of what they were saying in 1918. (Applause.) And when Martov answered Sosnovskii's remark by saying that this declaration is "for all eternity," then I would nevertheless permit myself to take the Mensheviks' defense against Martov. (Applause, laughter.) For I, comrades, have observed the development and conduct of Menshevik activity, perhaps more carefully and closely—which was far from pleasant—than anyone else. And on the basis of this fifteen-year observation, I assert that this declaration will not last not only "for all eternity," but not even for a year (applause), because the entire development of the Mensheviks, especially in such a great moment as has begun in the history of the Russian revolution, shows us the greatest vacillation among them, which on the whole amounts to this: they are departing from the bourgeoisie and its prejudices with the utmost difficulty, against their will. Many times hanging back, they are beginning to approach—very slowly, but all the same they are beginning to approach—the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in a year they will take a few more steps—of this I am completely convinced. And this declaration will be impossible to repeat, for if you strip this declaration of its envelope of general democratic phrases and parliamentary expressions, which would do honor to any leader of parliamentary opposition, if you cast aside these speeches, which many like but which seem boring to us, and you take the actual essence of the matter, then the entire declaration throughout says one thing: backward, to bourgeois democracy and nothing more. (Applause.) And so when we hear such declarations from people who proclaimed their sympathy for us, we say to ourselves: no, both terror and the Cheka{136}—these are absolutely necessary things. (Applause.) Comrades, so that you should not accuse me now, or so that no one could accuse me of carping at this declaration, I, on the basis of political facts, assert that under such a declaration both a right-wing Menshevik and a right-wing Socialist Revolutionary would sign with both hands at this very moment. I have proof of this. The Council of the Right Socialist Revolutionary Party, from which Volskii and his group were forced to break away—Volskii, chairman of the Constituent Assembly committee, whom you heard at the tribune—the council of the Right Socialist Revolutionaries, held this year, decided that they wish to merge with the Menshevik party, which they regard as close to them. Why? Because for printing the things that are in the declaration and in Menshevik publications (which are supposedly purely theoretical and which we unreasonably refuse to permit, as a representative of the Bund{137} complained, saying we have no complete freedom of the press), for printing such things, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries are willing to stand, and they are in solidarity with the Mensheviks whose declaration is built throughout on the very same principles as those of the Right Socialist Revolutionaries. At the same time, after a prolonged struggle, Volskii's group was forced to break away. There is the very confusion which clearly shows that this is not our carping at the Mensheviks, but the actual state of affairs—which is exemplified by the group of Socialist Revolutionary minorities. Here we happened to recall the Menshevik Rozanov, whom Martov and the party would surely have expelled, but here under this declaration both the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks would sign. Which means there are still two different trends among them, one of which regrets, weeps, offers condolences, and theoretically wishes to return to democratism, while the other acts. And Martov speaks in vain when he says that I was defending myself on the question of terrorism. This very expression alone shows how infinitely far removed from us are the views of petty-bourgeois democracy and how close they are to the Second International. In reality there is nothing socialist in them whatsoever; quite the opposite, in fact. When socialism has arrived, they preach to us again the old bourgeois views. I was not defending myself; I spoke of a special party that was created by war—a party of officers who commanded during the imperialist war, who distinguished themselves in that war, who know what practical politics is. When they tell us: "Your Cheka either needs to be eliminated or better organized," then, comrades, we answer: we do not claim that everything we do is the best, and we are willing and delighted to learn without the slightest prejudice. But if those people who were in the Constituent Assembly want to teach us how to organize protection against landowner-class sons and officers, then we answer them: you were in power, and you struggled with Kerensky against Kornilov, and you dealt with Kolchak, and yet these same White Guards threw you out of there without a struggle, like children. And yet you still say after that our Cheka is poorly organized! (Applause.) No, our Cheka is splendidly organized. (Applause.) And when the conspirators in Germany now mock the workers, when officers there under the leadership of field marshals cry out "Down with the Berlin government," when they with impunity murder the leaders of the Communists and the White Guard rabble treats the leaders of the Second International like schoolboys, we clearly see that this compromisist government is nothing but a toy in the hands of a group of conspirators. And when we have such an experience before us, when we have only just set foot on the path, then these people say: "You have excessive terror." But how many weeks ago did we uncover a conspiracy in Petrograd{138}? And how many weeks ago was Yudenich standing a few versts from Petrograd, and Denikin from Orel? Representatives of these vacillating parties and this vacillating democracy tell us: "We are glad that Yudenich and Kolchak are defeated." I willingly believe that they are glad, for they know what Yudenich and Kolchak would have threatened them with. (Applause.) I do not suspect these people of insincerity. But I ask them: when Soviet power is going through difficult moments, when conspiracies are being organized among bourgeois elements, and when in a critical moment we succeed in uncovering these conspiracies, then—what, they are uncovered purely by chance? No, not by chance. They are uncovered because the conspirators must live among the masses, because in their conspiracies they cannot manage without workers and peasants, and there they always eventually run up against people who go into these, as they say here, poorly organized Chekas and say: "There are exploiters gathered there." (Applause.) Therefore, I say that when a few months after a mortal danger, in the face of a conspiracy that strikes everyone in the eye, people come to us and say that our Constitution is not being observed, that the Cheka is poorly organized, one can say that these people have not learned politics in the struggle against the White Guards, they have not thought through their experience with Kerensky, Yudenich, and Kolchak, and they are unable to draw any practical conclusions from it. And insofar as you, gentlemen, are beginning to understand that Kolchak and Denikin represent a serious danger, that you need to make a choice in favor of Soviet power, to that extent it is time for you to abandon Martov's declaration "for all eternity." (Laughter.) The Constitution takes into account all the experience of our two years in power, without which, as I declared in my speech, and which no one has even attempted to refute here, without which we would not have lasted not only two years, but even two months. Let anyone try to refute this, if they wish to take any sort of objective approach to Soviet power, if only from the point of view of a historian rather than a political figure who wants to speak to the working masses and influence them.

They tell us: Soviets rarely assemble, they are not re-elected frequently enough. It seems to me that such a criticism should be answered not with speeches and resolutions, but with deeds. In my opinion, the best answer will be if you complete the work that Soviet power has begun—the work of calculating how many re-elections of Soviets we had at the local level in districts and cities, how many Soviet congresses there were, and so on. We have comrade Vladimirskii, deputy people's commissar of internal affairs, who has published material on the history of these congresses{139}. When I saw this material, I said: here is historical material that proves, among other things, that there has never been in the history of civilized peoples a single country where proletarian democracy has been applied so widely as in our Russia. If people say that we do not re-elect Soviets frequently enough, that we seldom convene congresses, then I invite each delegate to petition the appropriate organ so that at this congress we distribute an additional questionnaire, survey sheet, and on it each delegate writes down: in what month, date, and year, and in what district, city, and settlement Soviet congresses were convened. If you complete this simple work and each of you fills out such a survey sheet, you will obtain material that will supplement our incomplete data and that will prove that in such a difficult time as the time of war, when the action of European constitutions, established over centuries, having become the habit of the Western European person, was almost entirely suspended—in this time the Soviet constitution in terms of the participation of the popular masses in administration and the independent resolution of administrative matters at congresses and in Soviets and in re-elections was applied at the local level to such an extent as nowhere else in the world. And if people say this is insufficient, if they criticize and assert that "if your Central Executive Committee did not meet, this is indeed a terrible crime," then comrade Trotsky answered this splendidly to the representative of the Bund by saying that the Central Executive Committee was at the front. To this the representative of the Bund—that Bund which took a Soviet platform and which therefore one can suppose genuinely understood at last what the basis of Soviet power is—the representative of the Bund said—I wrote down her answer—"This is a curiosity, that the Central Executive Committee was at the front; it could have sent others."

We are waging a struggle with Kolchak, with Denikin, and with others—there was more than one dozen of them! It ended with Russian troops scattering them like children. We are waging a difficult victorious war. You know that at each raid we had to send all members of the Central Executive Committee to the front, and they answer us: "This is a curiosity; you could have found others." What then, did we act outside of time and space? Or can we produce Communists (applause) a few at a time each week? We cannot do this: workers who have been hardened by several years of struggle, who have acquired experience, who can lead—such workers, comrades, we have fewer of than in any other country. In order to prepare young workers, cadets, we will need to take all measures, and this will require several months, even years. And when this takes place in extremely difficult conditions, they answer us with a sneer. This sneer only proves a complete lack of understanding of these conditions. This is indeed ridiculous intellectual incomprehension, when they force us in these military conditions to act not as we have acted until now. We must strain our forces to the utmost degree, and therefore we must send all our best workers and members of the Central Executive Committee and executive committees to the front. And I am convinced that not a single person with any practical experience in administration would not condemn but would approve of us for the fact that we did everything possible to reduce collegial institutions with executive committees to a minimum, because they were reduced to a single executive committee under the pressure of war, because workers rushed to the front as they are now throwing themselves by the hundreds and thousands into fuel work. This is the foundation without which the Soviet republic cannot live. If this was purchased at the cost that Soviets would assemble less frequently for several months, then not a single reasonable worker or peasant would not understand the necessity of this, who would not approve of it.

I say that regarding democracy and democratism, they continue to serve us up completely the prejudices of bourgeois democratism. Here speakers from the opposition party said that it is necessary to suspend the suppression of the bourgeoisie. One must nevertheless think about what one says. What is the suppression of the bourgeoisie? A landowner can be suppressed and destroyed by eliminating the landed estates and transferring the land to the peasants. But can the bourgeoisie be suppressed and destroyed by eliminating large capital? Anyone who has learned the ABC of Marxism knows that the bourgeoisie cannot be suppressed this way, that the bourgeoisie is born from commodity production; in these conditions of commodity production, a peasant who has hundreds of pounds of grain left over, unnecessary for his family, which he does not deliver to the workers' state as a loan to help the hungry worker, and who speculates—what is this? Is this not the bourgeoisie? Is it not born here? In this question, in the question of grain, about the torments of hunger which all of industrial Russia is experiencing, is there any help to us from those who reproach us for not observing the Constitution, for suppressing the bourgeoisie? No! Do they help us in this respect? They hide behind the words "agreement between workers and peasants." Yes, of course, this is necessary. We showed how we do this when on October 26, 1917, we took the Socialist Revolutionaries' program in support of the peasants and carried it out entirely. By this we then showed that the peasant, who was being exploited by landowners, who lives by his own labor, who does not speculate—that such a peasant finds in the worker, sent by the central state authority, a faithful protector. Here we realized agreement with the peasant. When we conduct food policy, which requires that grain surplus, unnecessary for the peasant family, be given to workers as a state loan, then objections to this represent support for speculation. This still exists among the petty-bourgeois masses, accustomed to living in a bourgeois way. That is what is terrible, that is where the danger to the social revolution lies! Did the representatives of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, even the most left-wing ones, ever help us in this respect? No, never! That press of theirs, which we supposedly must permit in the name of "principles of freedom," and examples of which we have, shows that not by a single word—not to mention deeds—do they help us. Until we have completely overcome the old habit, the old cursed commandment, that everyone for himself and God for all, the only way out for us is to take the grain surplus as a loan for the hungry worker. This is terribly difficult to do—we know that. Here nothing can be done by force. But it is ridiculous to say that we represent a minority of the working class—this provokes only laughter. This can be said in Paris, and even there now they do not allow this to be said at workers' meetings. In a country where the government was overthrown with unprecedented ease, where workers and peasants with rifles in their hands defend their interests, where they wield it as an instrument of their will—in such a country to say that we represent a minority of the working class is absurd. I understand when such speeches come from the lips of Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Wilson. Those are whose words, those are whose ideas! When Wilson's, Clemenceau's, Lloyd George's speeches—the worst of the predators, the beasts of imperialism—are repeated here by Martov in the name of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (laughter), then I say to myself that one must be on guard and know that the Cheka is necessary here! (Applause.)

We are reproached by all opposition speakers, including the representatives of the Bund, that we do not observe the Constitution. I assert that we observe the Constitution most strictly. (Voice from the box: "Oh ho!") And although from the box, which in former times was the tsar's box and now is the opposition box (laughter), I hear an ironic exclamation "oh ho!"—nevertheless I will now prove this. (Applause.) I will read you that section of the Constitution which we observe most strictly and which shows that in all our activities we observe the Constitution. When at meetings attended by supporters of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, I had to speak about the Constitution, the difficulty was whether there was a text of the Constitution to quote. But meetings mostly take place in premises where the Constitution hangs on the wall. At this gathering this is not the case, but comrade Petrovskii helped me out by giving me a copy of a pamphlet entitled "Constitution of the RSFSR." I read paragraph 23: "Guided by the interests of the working class as a whole, the RSFSR deprives individual persons and individual groups of rights which they use to the detriment of the interests of the socialist revolution."

I, comrades, once again repeat that we have never regarded our activities in general or our Constitution in particular as an example of perfection. This congress has raised the question of constitutional amendments. We agree to make changes and let us consider the changes, but we will not enshrine this "for all eternity." But still, if you want to fight, let us fight fairly. If you want us to observe the Constitution, then do you also want paragraph 23 to be observed? (Applause.) If you do not want this, then let us dispute whether it is necessary to repeal or not the paragraph which says that we are not to go to the people with phrases about universal freedom and universal equality of the working masses. You learned constitutional law magnificently, but from old bourgeois textbooks. You recall words about "freedom and democracy," you cite the Constitution and remember the old words, and you promise the people everything so as not to fulfill it. We promise nothing of the sort; we do not offer equality to workers and peasants. You offer it—let us dispute. With those peasants who were exploited by landowners and capitalists, who work for their own family on land seized from the landowners—with such peasants there is complete equality, friendship, and fraternal union. But to those peasants who, out of old habit, out of darkness and self-interest, are pulling back toward the bourgeoisie—we do not grant equality. You speak general phrases about freedom and equality of the working masses, about democracy, about the equality of workers and peasants. We do not promise that the Constitution ensures freedom and equality in general. Freedom—but for what class and for what use? Equality—but between whom? Between those who work, who were exploited by the bourgeoisie for tens and hundreds of years and who are now fighting against the bourgeoisie? This is what is said in the Constitution: the dictatorship of the workers and the poorest peasants for the suppression of the bourgeoisie. Why is it that when you talk about the Constitution, you do not quote these words: "for the suppression of the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of speculators"? Show us an example of a country, an example of your fine Menshevik constitution. Perhaps you will find such an example at least in the history of Samara, where there was Menshevik power? Perhaps you will find it in Georgia, where there is now Menshevik power, where the suppression of the bourgeoisie, that is, the suppression of speculators, happens on the basis of complete freedom and equality, on the basis of consistent democracy and without the Cheka? Show such an example, and we will learn. But you cannot show this, for you know that in all places where compromisist power, Menshevik or semi-Menshevik, holds sway, there reigns wild, unbridled speculation. And Vienna, which Trotsky justly spoke of in his speech, where people like Friedrich Adler participate in the government, which does not know the "horrors of Bolshevism," is starving and suffering just as much as Petrograd and Moscow, but without the consciousness that the Viennese workers are paying the price of hunger to break through the way to victory over the bourgeoisie. Vienna starves and suffers more than Petrograd and Moscow, and here the Austrian and Viennese bourgeoisie on the streets of Vienna, on Nevskii Prospect and Kuznetskii Most of Vienna, commits monstrous things in the way of speculation and robbery. You do not observe the Constitution, but we do observe it when we recognize freedom and equality only for those who help the proletariat defeat the bourgeoisie. And with paragraph 23 we say that for the transitional period we are not painting pictures of lands of milk and honey. We say that we need to hold out not months, but years, to complete this transitional period. After two years we can say, and surely we will be believed, that we are capable of holding out several years precisely because we wrote into the Constitution the deprivation of rights of individual persons and groups. And whom we deprive of rights we do not hide; we say openly that we deprive the group of Mensheviks and right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries. For this we were reproached by figures of the Second International, but we say directly to the group of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries that we are ready for anything, but you must help us conduct the policy of the working masses against speculators, against those who help food speculation, against those who help the bourgeoisie. As you prove this in deeds, we will remove from you what we did according to the Constitution, and until then your empty words are only evasion. Our Constitution is not characterized by bombast; it tells the peasant: since you are a working peasant, you have all rights, but there cannot be equal rights for all in a society where workers are starving, where there is a struggle against the bourgeoisie. And to the worker it says: equality with the peasant who helps in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, and no generalizations! Here is a difficult struggle. Whoever wants to help us, we take with the greatest joy regardless of his past, paying no heed to any labels. And we know that more and more such people from other parties and nonparty people are coming to us, and this ensures our victory. (Loud applause, cries of "bravo.")